Heads should definitely roll for something like that. George and Laura Bush must be beside themselves with anger and rightly so! If the Secret Service allowed that to happen, young Barbara Bush wasn't being guarded very well at all.

The Secret Service is an extraordinary group, of course. But one wonders whether--as 'Guarding Tess' had it, its agents don't regard anything other than being with the President as second-string and so, demotivating. One thing's for sure, the agents who let this happen won't be moving up to first string any time soon.

You know what? No more frog-marching. I'm quite sick of frog-marching. People messed up and I am confident that it will affect their careers very adversely and that a lot of good in terms of policy and procedure will result from this lapse.

As a parent, I can guarantee you what I would do to these guys. I'd force them to come to a press conference with me, where I let the press corps grill them on how they let a robber get that close to my daughter.

Then, at the end of the press conference, I'd fire them on national television.

Now, I know George W. Bush won't do that; he requires loyalty from the Secret Service to stay alive. He and his loved ones will require that loyalty for many, many years after he leaves the service of his country.

And such a press conference wouldn't earn him many loyalty points with our men in black. Maybe they decide they don't see that moonbat holding that gun at the next large rally, if you know what I mean.

But I'll say this: Oath's are important. These guys failed their oath's.

Women leave their purses unguarded every time they get up to dance. Ever see women on the dance floor with their purses? At restaurants they leave them behind when they get back in the chow line for seconds.

As a county prosecutor who has seen, first hand (up close and personal, in fact) the simply amazing disconnect between what a good reporter writes and what copy editors and headline writers place in the media, I would not be willing to even guess what happened here.

I do want to observe that lay people, and even lawywers who should be able to reach back to their first year crim law class for the proper definitions, continually say robbery when no robbery occurred.

Despite the wording of the headline, that she was robbed, it seems like the purse went missing in the general confusion of a busy restaurant.

So a felon was close enough to take a purse. Which means they're close enough to cause bodily harm. I'm curious why the girls were allowed to go to such a restaurant -- or to sit in such an exposed location. And then to read that off-duty Secret Service men are in bar brawls. What is going on?

Madison Man: Now they're "girls" and they shouldn't have enough of a life that they can got to restaurants? The hell? Most of us women go to bars and restaurants and we don't even have one bodyguard. Imagine having Secret Service protection. You'd feel utterly safe... but then they let you get robbed. It's a damned outrage. Blaming Barbara makes no sense at all.

And how would you like to live through your 20s this much in the public eye? Judging her makes no sense at all. She is not a public official. She owes us nothing, nothing more than any other young person. Why not blame every young person who hasn't dedicated herself to public service? There are a lot of them. The notion that her father is responsible what she does is offensive. She's a free adult. So you don't like her father. Do you judge every young person by their father?

We don't even know the lay-out of the place - it sounds like a classic snath and run. She would have been 'boxed' by her guards, their focus is always external, the primary and an accomplice approach wanting autographs most likely, they would have been scruitinized as they approached, the snatch made and a sprint to the nearest exit. The exits would be guarded but the focus there would be totally external as well, seeking to prevent potential threats from entering. They wouldn't be looking for a thief running out. Whoever made the 'hit'has done it before - they obviously knew what they were doing. I seriously doubt they knew who they were robbing.

I do think of the Bush Twins as girls, 'cause that's what they were when I first became aware of them in 2000. It's much easier for me to freeze people at one age than to acknowledge that they're aging -- my daughter could talk to you at some length about this unfortunate denialist trait of mine.

1. The president can't "fire" anybody except the people he "hires" e.g the Cabinet types. Even for a "political appointee", he needs to ask the guy to quit, an there is a minimum of paperwork needed to be done by the boss that actually Hired the guy. As for the SS, the POTUS can say to the head of his detail, "That guy is history, I don't want to see him again, reassign him. I don't know about the SS, but in the Army, a "relief for cause" would strongly encourage an officer to retire or resign, since his career and future was shot.

2. We don't know the circumstances of the theft. Was it robbery? or was it picking up a purse left on the floor when she got up to dance or hit the ladies room and the SS proceeded to cover her movement.

3. I as struck by the vicious comments on the news site and to a lesser extent here. The Bush daughters and just that, daughters. They didn't ask for Pop to be President, didn't ask for SS protection, aren't responsible for Iraq, and don't need to volunteer for combat to assuage some guilt of their father's or their own. Folks should be ashamed at those comments, there and here.

Madison Man -- I think your daughter is high and drunk all the time. I'm just going to go through the rest of my life spouting that, though I have no facts to back it up. The fact is, I don't like her father. And that's enough for me.

"A Secret Service agent on the advance detail got into an "altercation" with someone after a night out and was badly beaten, according to the law enforcement reports. The Secret Service said today the incident was an attempted mugging that occurred while the agent was on his own time. The agent is doing fine."

I think people should prevent some contrary evidence before claiming it was a "bar brawl" and that this was an example of a Secret Service agent "abandoning the oaths" he took.

Mark Daniels said... Heads should definitely roll for something like that. George and Laura Bush must be beside themselves with anger and rightly so! If the Secret Service allowed that to happen, young Barbara Bush wasn't being guarded very well at all.

The Secret Service is an extraordinary group, of course. But one wonders whether--as 'Guarding Tess' had it, its agents don't regard anything other than being with the President as second-string and so, demotivating. One thing's for sure, the agents who let this happen won't be moving up to first string any time soon.

There is no such thing as "perfect protection". Just like certain fools who think "body armor" or "uparmored HUMVEES" keep our soldiers safe. (See note) They don't. And being ringed in bodyguards doesn't prevent some attacks from fully or partially succeeding as events in Lebanon - and attacks on Ford, Reagan, JFK prove.

The SS men and occasional woman are there to protect the "dignitary" they are assigned to - not Clinton's dog Buddy (roadkill) or woman's pocketbooks.

Career pickpockets and "snatch and grab" specialists can operate so fast that the crime is discovered later. Nor - if they did see it - are they supposed to abandon the person they are bodyguarding to drop protection and chase after a petty thief - which could be a deliberate distraction as prelude to attack on the key figure.

It is not uncommon for cops or SS to have cars stolen, wallets picked. One pick picket gang of El Salvadorans deliberately targeted cops in uniform as a rite of passage for apprentices to show they had cajones.

Note: I wish - given the growing disconnect between families in America that provide soldiers and the rest of society that the rest had a better education in military science. Pehaps given our public schools are now behind in math and sciences of most advanced nations and struggling to just get half of Latino and blacks to simply graduate, it's wishful thinking...But people do not generally understand tradeoffs or limitations of armor, the nature of a thinking enemy, the fact that our deaths are less than in a peacetime military rate of 30 years ago, and Lefty obsession over any Iraqi or American death being unacceptable all but guarantees Darfur will be abandoned to it's fate.

The problem with calling it a robbery is that a robbery typically requires the actual or threatened use of force. For example, in Colorado, C.R.S. 18-4-301 states that:(1) A person who knowingly takes anything of value from the person or presence of another by the use of force, threats, or intimidation commits robbery.(2) Robbery is a class 4 felony.

With the Secret Service present, it is highly unlikely that the theft involved the "use of force, threats, or intimidation".

Going on with my CO statutes, if this had happened here, the more appropriate offense would have problably been "theft". C.R.S. 18-4-401:(1) A person commits theft when he knowingly obtains or exercises control over anything of value of another without authorization, or by threat or deception, and:(a) Intends to deprive the other person permanently of the use or benefit of the thing of value; or

I have spent enough time in clubs and bars over the years to know that plenty of women do carry purses that they can dance with, and many others are very careful to make sure that someone is protecting their purses when dancing. Also, in an ongoing relationship, I often end up carrying a woman's essentials - notably ID, makeup, and libstick, when we go out dancing.

Let me suggest though that purse paranoia is something that is learned. My experience is that teenage girls are far more likely to misplace their active purse than a 50 year old woman is. The Bush girls have spent their post-high school years protected by the Secret Service, and, because of that, may be less cognizent of the danger of such being stolen than other girls of their age.

I love how the secret service agents have been condemned based simply on a generic, one sentence. Before we start executing these brave men and women, don't you think we should find out the details of what actually happened?